The chief venue in The Client is the Memphis juvenile justice system, and the chief problem for the system is how to get eleven-year-old Mark Sway to reveal what he may know about a criminal case. Through the frequent use of Mark's point of view, Grisham presents how the system seems callous, frightening, and unwilling to recognize Mark's good nature. While readers may know that the logical, legal, and even moral option is for Mark to tell what he knows, readers can also grasp how the system and its players make Mark resistant and fearful.

While sneaking cigarettes in the woods behind their trailer, Mark and his eight-year-old brother Ricky watch a man place a hose in his car's tailpipe in a suicide attempt. Without much thought, Mark intervenes, removing the hose, but then gets snatched up and taken into the car by the wired man...